paper assignment is to compare and contrast two works of European or American art that you see in person in a New York museum and that date between 1400 and the present. Do not try to get away with not seeing the works in person since what is on the internet is rarely what is on view. The choice of the two works goes a long way in ensuring the success of your paper. Pick two works that have a lot in common (i.e. similarities) to make sure you are comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges. Snap a couple of possibilities on your phone and I will help you pick the best choice. The best scenario is when they are from the same time period and the same geographic location. The paper should be five to seven typewritten pages, double spaced using 1 inch margins. If you get stuck and can only think of three or four pages hand me a draft and I will help you see what you may have overlooked. All papers are due on the day of the final exam.Your paper should start with a simple declarative sentence like: This paper will compare and contrast two works of art from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Or this paper will analyze two landscape paintings (or portraits; or still-life paintings; or paintings of the Madonna and Child, etc.) from the Brooklyn Museum that share many characteristics and are also different in many ways. Other museums include the Whitney museum or the Museum of Modern Art.The first paragraph or two of the paper should contain the hard information obtained from the museums wall labels. That means the artists names, their dates, the title of the works, the size of the pictures, the basic subject matter if that gives you more information that the title, the materials used to make the picture, and any other relevant information from the labels. From these labels you may already be able to point out some similarities, like the dates, or subjects, or type of picture. While you can point them out here, you can expand the discussion of these in the body of your paper.Then you can start with the formal (or stylistic) similarities. Remember start with the larger more general issues first and then eventually move into the similarities about smaller details. The largest issue is always the composition. This means given a blank canvas of certain dimensions, each artist decides how to arrange the forms on it; how those forms will relate to things like the center, the sides, the top and bottom parts of the canvas; if the overall arrangement will be symmetrical or asymmetrical; how the forms will relate to the outer edges, or the place where the frame meets the painted parts of the picture; and other issues of composition like scale of the figures or objects compared to the overall available space.This should lead to the similarities of space. Where the issues above deal with the arrangement along the two dimensional available space, this part should deal with the similarities of how the artists conjure up the idea of 3D space, whether by using linear one-point perspective, or a less organized used of diagonal receding lines, or by using overlap, or size diminution so that things or people meant to be understood as further back get smaller and smaller, or light and shade.Here you can begin a discussion of the use of light and shade in general in your two paintings, considering the similarities of what kind of light is being painted. Is it a strong theater-like spotlight that creates strong contrasts of brilliant highlight and dark deep shadows? Or is it a soft and diffused (sfumato) light that envelopes the scene and/or figures in an atmospheric haze? Or is it a combination of the two? Or is it an overall light of the studio or the noon time with no specific sense of the direction the light is coming from?The use of color (earth colors or primary colors or pastel colors, etc.) and line (bold and strong as in an outline or thin and suggested rather than unbroken) are related to light but are different formal elements that artists make choices about. You can combine the discussion of line and color and their similarities in your two works if you like or you can separate them and talk about the similarities of the two elements in different paragraphs.Brushstroke is another element that is related to the issues of line and color. Here you can discuss the similarities of the brushstroke and look at whether they are smooth and almost invisible to the viewer or loose, wet or rough looking for effect. How are the brushstrokes treated similarly for some parts of the painting or for all the painting?What are the similarities of subject-matter? Beyond the larger issue of whether they are portraits, still-life, landscape, genre or history paintings, how have the artists interpreted the moment of the picture similarly? How does the sense of time or timelessness enter into the interpretation of the pictures? Are symbols used that need to be deciphered or do the artists paint the surfaces of reality? What is the effect of the similar treatments of the subject-matter? These are suggestions for things you can look for as similarities. Some may be relevant to your choice of paintings, some may not be. You may think of some elements that are not suggested here that are similar and that would be great.Once you have gone through the similarities you can start to analyze the differences. As we have seen in class, often a similarity can also be a difference just by being tweaked a certain way. There may be more fundamental differences, but remember if the difference overwhelm the similarities you probably have not chosen your comparison wisely and will be stuck for a meaningful conclusion.The last part of this paper needs to be a conclusion, a so what? part of the paper. This is just a short paragraph but it can be the most difficult part to figure out. It needs to be a coming together or sum total of the similarities and difference, telling the reader what has been accomplished through the analysis. But remember it cant be your favorite similarity or difference. It needs to be general but not so general that it might apply to the comparison of any two pictures and not just the two you have just written about.The works are:
Jan van Eyck and Workshop Assistant “The Crucifixion; The Last Judgement”
Joos van Cleve
“The Last Judgement”
